rabbit ready

Are you ready for the Chinese New Year Year of the Rabbit's arrival this week?  Rabbits seem quiet yet quick, charming, and obviously very prolific.  These Tea-Steeped Eggs from Twinings of London might add to your Chinese New Year's party menu, taking hard-boiled eggs and soaking them overnight in black tea along with star anise flavoring and a nice dose of salt for good measure.   

tea and the little black cat

When the tea is brought at five o'clock,
And all the neat curtains are drawn with care,
The little black cat with bright green eyes,
Is suddenly purring there....

Poetry:  Harold Munro
Artwork:  John White Alexander

bathing with the green fairy

If you're intrigued by yet still a bit wary of absinthe and/or you don't have time to reenact the whole Johnny Depp From Hell bathtub scene, then perhaps this absinthe soap is for you.  From PerpetualKid.com, it comes in a lovely pale green tin with green fairies dancing upon it, and it lets you inhale the heady scent of absinthe-scented suds while keeping a clear head.  Absinthe was of course referred to as the green fairy back in its day, because of its distinctive color and how it could lift you out of the mundane.  Yet sometimes if you drank too of the green fairy she might have turned into a green harpy, like in this 1895 featured art by A. Maignan.   Maignan's title was The Green Muse but their relationship looks a little worrisome to me, and it also seems like it's time for Monsieur Writer/Poet to put down the bottle and clean up that messy workspace.

verona and its caffè

I was happy to be gifted with some Starbucks Caffè Verona this Christmas, described on the package as a full-bodied blend of Latin American and Asia/Pacific coffees, with Italian Roast...added for depth.  And that's where they get me, with the Italian Roast part.  I can't quite relate to the further description of it being the flavor of a fire-roasted marshmallow after you pull off the darkened cap, mainly because in my campfire days I was always very meticulous about only toasting marshmallows to a pale golden brown and not roasting them in the least.  And since I've been drinking it in the morning, I'm not following Starbucks' suggestion of enjoying Caffè Verona with "[c]hocolate truffles and dinner guests."  But it is pleasantly addictive! 

"How use doth breed a habit in a man!" -- Two Gentlemen of Verona, Wm. Shakespeare

Pictured:  View of Verona and the River Adige from the Ponte Nuovo (Bernardo Bellotto, 1747)

new york's finest

One of the things that's always made New York special is the simply distinctive, blue, gold and white Grecian-style paper coffee cup that first appeared on the scene in the early 1960s.  Called the Anthora, it was originally designed by Leslie Buck for the Sherri Cup Co., and although Mr. Buck passed away this past April, his cup lives on in paper form--and in a more enduring version at the Museum of Modern Art store and various other on-line venues.  I grew up seeing many an Anthora tossed into a garbage can, ironically at the same Long Island Railroad train station where Mr. Buck made his NY home.  I'm sure he saw all his discarded designs as well, but hopefully he just took it as a sign of his mass consumption success and felt good about how his cups brightened the mornings of so many Manhattan-bound commuters in need of a stylishly served dose of caffeine.